Page 68 of Hearts of Stone

“I’m entitled—” he started to say.

“To a kick in the fucking nuts, you pathetic little worm.” I pulled my phone out, bringing up my contacts and then found the one I was looking for. “We broke up months ago, before I inherited anything.”

“No, we didn’t.” He smiled at the other men standing around the gate, and I spared a passing thought to wonder who the hell they were. Other lawyers from his firm? “You left me, your long term partner, once you inherited a fortune, after me being a loyal and steadfast boyfriend. We signed a lease together.”

“One you were in the process of breaking well and truly before I inherited anything,” I shot back. “I have many, many text messages in my phone detailing your attempts to hound me out of the flat we shared.”

“Yes, well—”

“And what about you, Susie Q?” I looked past him to where Scaramouche stood by the car, her face going paler by the second. “You work for a legal firm. You know you’ll be summonsed to speak in court about the nature of yourrelationship with Pencil Dick… I mean, Trevor. You also know what the penalties are for lying in court.”

“I—” she started to say.

“Don’t say a thing,” Trevor hissed, pulling out a handkerchief before mopping his brow.

“Don’t want to say anything that can and will be used against you in court?” I replied. “Smart move.”

“OMG, bestie, if I could get it up for the bearded clam, I so would,” Daniel hissed, sidling up to me. “You’re so hot right now.”

I ignored him, focussing back on the man who was stopping me from sleeping the day away in a gargoyle sex infused haze. I thumbed my phone, and put the call through, waiting until the recipient picked up before I started speaking.

“You don’t get to do this shit anymore, Trevor,” I spelled out clearly. “You left me. You talked me into supporting you all the way through your very protracted university studies, to keep supporting you when you failed third year and had to do it over.”

“Jade?” a deep voice said through my tinny phone speaker.

“I put my dreams, my future, on hold, so you could pursue yours, ‘for us’.” I nodded sharply. “I thought I was making all these sacrifices ‘for us’.” Trevor started to splutter, but I spoke over him. “But when you got the fancy job and managed to start pulling in a decent income, what did you do?” I was the lawyer now, as well as judge, jury and executioner, as I stepped right up to the gates. “What did you do, Trevor? While I worked hard and made sure to keep the flat to your exacting standards of cleanliness. What did you do while I was doing my best for us?”

“I…” Trevor always tried to have the last word, and his throat was working as he fought to find a way to spin his shit, but I could see when he realised that this wasn’t going to go the way he’d expected. Obviously he’d thought he’d have his momentwhen he tossed those papers at me and then waltzed away with half of the family fortune.

“Jade, is everything OK?”

That masculine voice came down the phone line, so warm and full of concern, and I smiled when Trevor realised who it was. His dad was on the other end, a completely lovely man, evidence that sometimes mothers should eat their young, because sometimes nice people have truly awful children.

“Let me outline, for everyone here, just what you did.”

“Look, Jade—”

Trevor held his hands up, ready to ward my words away, but what the hell did he think would happen? Did he think me that weak that I’d just lie down and accept his bullshit? The reality, of course, was far from flattering.

“I was coming to your office to bring you your favourite takeaway,” I said, only sheer will stopping my voice from wavering. I was tired, so tired, not only from the lack of sleep, but also from carrying this shit around.

“Jade, we—”

“You’d been ‘working so hard’, and had been coming home less and less, but I thought you were doing the extra hours ‘for us’.”

My eyes started to burn in their sockets.

“Look, I might’ve—”

“Imagine my surprise to walk in and find you balls deep in your paralegal.”

Susan had been full of triumphant glee that day, but now she seemed to display some post-nut clarity that made her flush bright red with embarrassment.

“You didn’t apologise when I found you, didn’t say it was all a big mistake. As beef massaman leaked into the carpet, you finished what you were doing and then yelled at me to get out.”

“Jesus, Trevor…”

His father’s voice was filled with all the horror, all the dismay I’d been waiting for someone to feel.

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